In most urban centers, exposure to information such as advertising information and current news information has become an accepted part of everyday life. Apart from newspapers, magazines, and television, mass advertising information is visually presented by way of billboards, posters, and other various signs, which are capable of displaying relatively fixed images. Countless products and services are presented to the public via fixed images with limited text. In an effort to capture and hold public attention, some mass advertising has been presented via pixelboards containing an array of light emitting diodes and/or lamps that can be controlled over time to present simple animation, pictures, and updateable textual information. Recently, billboards capable of presenting a series of different fixed images have been used to advertise more than one product or service. Despite these advances, manufacturers, distributors, and advertisers are continuously seeking further advances in public image displays. In addition to efforts targeted to attract consumers, distributors seek further advances for maintaining and updating advertisements and other public displays.
For example, operators of billboards maintain not only the support structure, but must identify a new client and create the appropriate sized image when a present client no longer wishes to display their particular advertisement on the board. After the image has been generated, technicians must visit the site to apply the new image. Similarly, each new graphic image, text message, or animation for a new client or message designated for a pixel board is programmed and the program delivered to the site of the pixelboard. By way of further example, in order to update and/or replace publicly displayed posters and placards, the replacements must be printed, distributed, and the various display sites visited in order to remove and replace the various advertisements.
Recent advances in data storage capacity and data compression techniques, coupled with advances in the art of image display technology, have resulted in the proliferation of high-resolution television quality display devices. Nearly every major sporting and convention venue has one or more display devices suited for providing advertising, information updates, close-ups of the action or performance, replays, and/or other images. The viewing public has come to expect such high-resolution color displays. However, many of these public venue displays are quite complex and require a significant support operation requiring real-time human interaction and a significant amount of computing power to supply the updated information to the viewers.
Other public display devices consist of television type display monitors associated with closed-circuit input feeds from within the public facility. These systems are well known and are relatively easy to operate. However, closed-circuit display systems still require a significant level of human interaction at the point of distribution.
A number of much simpler public display devices have been attempted with various degrees of success. For example, in order to reach a captive audience several public display systems have been developed for use in public elevators. Display systems for these environments often attempt to provide real-time information pertinent to their captive audiences.
To date, information display systems for elevators are capable of presenting at most the floor number, a floor directory of tenants and in some cases simple text based news information. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,479 to Fujiwara, appears to describe a display apparatus for an elevator in which information regarding the operating conditions of the elevator is displayed along with “general” information, such as news and weather. A display unit is provided within the elevator cab and includes a display area for displaying text along side a picture display area for displaying predetermined graphic images. Predetermined pieces of information are assembled and assigned a number indicative of a priority for that piece of information. The information is selected for display in accordance with the priority value associated with the information. The system described in the '479 patent is not well suited for the presentation and leasing of advertisements as the messages are not easily updateable and information is restricted to basic text and primitive graphic data.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,629 to Tsuji, et al., appears to describe another display apparatus capable of presenting news, weather, etc., to those in an elevator cab. The information is selected to be displayed at predetermined times. The device described in this patent allows for the information displayed to be corrected (i.e., new or replacement information displayed) through inputs made remotely from the elevator cab or from a caretaker's room via a portable computer. As with the '479 patent, the '629 patent discloses a simple scrolling message display system updateable via a remote computer. The device disclosed in the '629 also requires extensive on-site user intervention to update the displayed messages.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,897 to Matsumoto, et al., an elevator display system is disclosed in which operational information concerning the elevator, in particular a floor indicator, is superimposed on a background image on a display screen. The background image is described as being a plurality of still pictures assigned to the different floors at which the elevator stops or different kinds of animations assigned to the different floors. As with the other display systems, the '897 patent does not offer an easily updateable and controllable solution for advertisers interested in presenting their goods and services via public display systems.
Other display systems are presently available commercially. For example, Ceiva Logic, Inc. of Los Angeles, Calif., has produced and marketed a digital picture frame. Ceiva's digital picture frame permits subscribers of their service to display digital pictures of family and friends, as well as, works of art.
Using the Ceiva Gallery, Ceiva customers can also select specific digital images of famous works of art for display. In addition, Ceiva users have the capability to purchase prints from various art collections from the Cieva Internet site. Ceiva's system has several limitations that prohibit its use as a system and method for distributing and maintaining public service messages and advertisements for a fee. For example, Cieva's subscribers must directly select each individual image for display. While the Cieva Gallery permits access to multiple galleries or collections of art works, the user must actively select each image for download and display in accordance with the users's preferred display mode. In contrast, advertisers, politicians, and others that pay a fee for public displays and presentations of their goods, services, and messages desire control of the presentation method, the locations where their information is presented, and assurance that the images were presented.
From the foregoing, it can be appreciated that it would be desirable to have a flexible system and method for conveniently delivering, presenting, and monitoring, publicly displayed digital images that avoids one or more of the problems and/or shortcomings identified above.